Sunday, November 23, 2014

Created by the brilliant Italian designer and modeler Giuseppe "Pino" Civitarese, from Paper Pino website, this is the paper model of the Coelum Stellatum Christianum Celestial Globe. - "Whilst Keplerwas studying the planets motion, his son-in-law Jacob Bartsch, astronomer, Wilhelm Schickard, the astronomer and professor of Oriental languages at Tübingen, and Julius Schiller (c. 1580 – 1627), a lawyer from Ausburg, together with other collaborators were planning the re-organization of the celestial system. In particular, Schiller substituted all the pagan constellations with christian subjects:zodiac became the “Cycle of Twelve Apostles”; boreal and austral emispheres were populated by characters and symbols from Old and New Testament, respectively; the Sun became Christ, and the Moon the Virgin Mary. Since the mythological tradition survived intact to present day, we can deduce that this reform did not have great success. The identification of the stars and the comparison of new observations with those of past scientists appeared unnecessarily complicated. Therefore, the astronomers of the time continued to prefer the mythological figures." - Giuseppe "Pino" Civitarese